While having a smattering of Italian, Brasch was
determined to become fluent in the language. On his first morning in Rome,
he sat down with Professor Sacrafia, his teacher, and went through the
first cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy. Later works would include
Leopardi's Canti and this fine edition of Michelangelo's poems.

In
1888 George Moore (1852-1933) had published his Confessions of a
Young Man, a fictionalised autobiographical account of his days
in Paris. It was a pioneering work in this genre and the blurb on
the cover says it all. Brasch read this copy while in Rome in 1927.

George Moore, Confessions of a young man.
New York: Modern Library, 1920

'I was as ready for Italy
as pictures and books and talk at 'Manono' could make me.
My taste was unformed: I was open to all impressions…'
So wrote Brasch of the Italy he came to love. He visited it first in the
winter of 1927 with the de Beers; later visits included a long vacation
in Florence to research the subject of the Italian Renaissance for his
history degree. Although a keen traveller and enjoying other parts of
Europe such as France and Germany, it was in Italy that he felt alive
and could 'live more fully…'

Brasch once wrote that 'English
will recover from Yeats, but I doubt if it will get over Eliot.'
Brasch not only admitted he was inhibited by Eliot's poetry
but also that he could not understand it. He opted for Yeats, who became
'the one great living poet.' When Brasch left Naples for New
Zealand in October 1930, he sailed on the Orient liner S. S. Oronsay.
He carried with him Yeats's A Vision, itself a complex
mystical work. A tipped-in list gives a good indication of what else Brasch
wanted to read at the time.